“My sample sip down continues, and I am starting my day with this sample that came in a tea gift box from my daughter. (Superanna, for those who haven’t figured that out yet! ...”
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17 Tasting Notes

Today the weather is cloudy, rainy in Paris. Rain is the Automn’s side I don’t like. I was looking for some solace…

I found Pomme d’amour…Toffee apple in English ? The kind of sweet things we can buy in carnival. Let’s go for joy !
On the other hand, each time I see a Pomme d’amour…I think about Snow-White and the very red apple…as attractive as poisoned…

So verdict : Pomme d’amour is a joyful poison (addictive poison !)

To me this tea is closer to oven-baked caramelized apples than Toffee apples – it is really fruity and sweet but natural.

The dry leaf is amazing : very very dry and shinning.
Dammann is generous, a lot of petals and big pieces of apples are mixed with it. The smell is just fantastic.

The color of the infusion is really beautiful and the mix of the 2 black teas (Ceylan + china) is a perfect base to reveal all the flavours , so sweet but always natural.

There are different coatings, I think your pommes d’ amour are red candy apples the original toffee apple. Then what we see more often now in the U.S. are Caramel Apples (and sometimes with chocolate and nuts or sprinkles on them see www.mrsprindables.com ).

thank you Sil ! So it is- again- a linguistic variation with Great Britain (I worked 8 years for an English company…I remember they were unhappy when I was typing color in place of colour…) Thanks God tea will be always tea :)

We hit a Rocky Mountain Candy Co. recently that had “cheesecake” caramel apples coated with white chocolate and graham cracker crumbs. Didn’t get much cheesecake flavor … but good gravy, it was so rich, it didn’t matter! (P.S. the tea sounds great!)

This review of yours is making me very curious! I had seen Dammann teas for sale and been curious – the price of tins while not exactly cheap is much more reasonable here than MF or Fauchon or TWG. But the seller has no sample opens and so I never got any. So opinions are so important to help me choose!

@ cteresa
I’ve never had any “bad” Dammann Frères. They are a little bit less expensive than MF on loose tea as well.
To me DF is the only rival to MF regarding quality and taste.
I think you can choice one without problem just taking your taste in teas in consideration regarding the ingredients.

That is good to know, I will try it! normal MF is pretty expensive here, at big department stores hitting close to 20 euros for the normal black tin, though there are a couple places which sell some varities by the weight and that of course is cheaper, 9 euros or something per 100 grams. Not French prices :(

Once upon a time, there was a Fairy who had given up on Apple tea… She thought she could never find an apple tea that could meet her requirements and expectations.

What she had always longed for, was a tea that could reproduce the juicy and delicious taste of apples, without the company of the harmful Wicked Army of Additives! The WAA had terrorized the world of tea for centuries and was the main cause of discord between tea and flavour.

What she wanted seemed so simple: an apple tea that would simply taste like… APPLES!

Just as the Fairy had finally resigned on the idea, Princess Ysaurella from the heights of her French Kingdom, decided it would be otherwise. The injustice had to stop!

Apple tea should take its place in the wonderful world of Fairies and no longer be a forbidden tea!

From the other side of the ocean, she did everything possible to arrange safe transportation for Pomme d’Amour, and it quickly reached destination to the Fairy.

When the Fairy examined the offering, she remained skeptical: how could a spell that was there for so long could be lifted so easily? How could the WAA be defeated so easily?

As she had nothing to lose, she focused her attention on the infused elixir’s aroma…Oh, the scent of fresh apples! Was it possible? She cautiously moved to the next step and tasted.

Awww … divine potion that finally valued the Apple as the Queen of fruit she really was, allowing her to shine in her beautiful black China-Ceylon robe, without any unnecessary garments such as cinnamon, cake or pie flavours! Just the right amount of sweet and juicy apple taste!

It goes to say that without Princess Ysaurella reconciliation could not have taken place! The WAA was put to rest, and all the Fairies lived happily ever after, sipping their Apple tea.

I’m glad you liked this one !
I really like it too, it is just the taste des pommes au four :)
I didn’t know you were experiencing disagreement with apple teas but that’s true this one is just so natural.

I actually stopped buying any apple teas! I just have the ones I get as samples in various tea orders., which I never care much for. Now too bad this one was just a teaser since I can’t buy it here!! Let me know if from one of your North American swaps you ever get an apple tea that is worthy of the name :-)

only had 2 :mom’s apple pie (DT) and another from Della Terra and they were just inferior to this one.
As you’re near Montréal, you may buy some Betjeman & Barton : Il était une fois Noël, it has apple but it’s a xmas blend so not a mono apple blend.

Preparation

My sample sip down continues, and I am starting my day with this sample that came in a tea gift box from my daughter. (Superanna, for those who haven’t figured that out yet! grin )

Not many apple teas have made me roll around in ecstasy. Neither does this one. LOL! It isn’t bad, it is quite good. The base is smooth and warming, there is definitely more than just apple going on in it, and I can see this being incredibly comforting and soothing on a cold winter day. I don’t drink alcohol at all but I can really see this tea becoming awesome with the addition of something stout and dark, like maybe a splash of cognac? Brandy? I don’t know liquors though I have tasted some way way back, but I do think this would be an amazing tea to add some warming spirits to.

And I may be a hypocrite, because I said I wasn’t crazy about apple tea but I polished off a large cup of this in record time. Now I wish I had more.

This sounds so irresistible. French caramel apples in tea. I never had any caramel apple, ever, but that just made it much more appealing – it was the idea of it, caramel and apple, oh yay. It really was something I wanted to try, particularly since I have recently been impressed by the first Dammann tea I tried (Paul et Virginie, that was). So when Ysaurella so kindly shared this with me, yay, thank you so much again Ysaurella!

I could not resist trying this before getting really better from the cold I had, so my first teapot was not really a fair trial (a waste, but could not resist). And here goes my second attempt – I was distracted by something else and brew it just a smidgeon too long. No harm done, still extremely drinkable, just adding the data point that it´s probably much better with shorter steep times.

The dry leaf smells totally divine – not like apple nor caramel, but some indescritable blend, fruity and spicy and yes caramelley. The liquor smells and tastes differently. Like apples yes, and this tea left me quite baffled. I think part of the problem is that never having any caramel apple I did not know what to expect. For example, yesterday I tried another marvelous sample from Ysaurella, Rouge d´Automne which tastes wonderfully of marrons glacés – which taste very differently from any other dish of chestnuts! If I had never had had marrons glacés I think I would not have known what to make of that taste. And I get this feeling from Pomme D´Amour, like I can not recognize what it is about. It is very nice indeed, but a stranger somehow!

Preparation

Oh, I love mixing caramel and apple flavoured teas for this effect! Half and half of Kusmi’s caramel and their apple is one of the best combinations I’ve ever done. :) (I’ve found, though, that LPdT’s Toffee, which fills the same slot as the caramel in my mind, doesn’t work half so well with that combination.)

I didn’t select this tea specifically for today, as I chose it randomly from the teas that I have from Dammann Freres (thank you Doulton!), but it is perfect for today, as it is cloudy/overcast, and may actually rain! It’s definitely telling me that autumn is on its way. YAY! (For autumn IS my favorite season)

The flavor here is apple – much like baked apples. Sweet! Delicious. I like this tea very much. The black tea base is smooth and rich but not particularly brisk. A very relaxing black tea.

Preparation

My second tasting from the nice samples provided by Ysaurella…
The weather is hot and sunny; the clouds and rain should only come later in the day. However I felt like having comfort food today to make up for my almost gone cold and for the absence of Hubby.
Pomme d’Amour smelled like the perfect antidote to any gloominess.
I was afraid to have left it steeping a bit too long, as I’m not sure I was not on the wrong side of 5 minutes, and that I had put too much of it, as it had really swelled inside my strainer. The little apple pieces in particular had especially filled out.
The color was a nice caramel honey; the smell very sweet and candy-like.
Then I sipped and was relieved not to find any hint of bitterness. My first surprise was that the caramel taste was lighter than I expected, but fortunately tasted like home-made caramel and not like the fake-caramel flavor which is often used in industrial foods and beverages, especially herbal-dust in bags heavily laden with artificial coloring and flavoring that is sold in most supermarkets.
The tea base seems really nice. Pomme d’Amour tea has the very natural taste of real fruit heavily dipped and cooked in sugar. This is undeniably a very high quality product.
I have to confess that I have only one bit of a toffee apple once in my life, many many years ago. My cousin who had shared a part of her delicacy with me was not very happy when I told her I did not like it very much, as it was too sweet and sugary; and that’s about the only recollection I have of it.
I am not the biggest fan of desserts, especially cakes, and am really quite picky about those; however a good Tarte Tatin is among my favorites. So I tried to find out what differences there were between Pomme d’Amour tea with what I love about apple cakes and Tarte Tatin. I came out with those findings:
- I usually like the apples to be a bit tangy, as the fruit tanginess complements the sugar-butter caramel better;
- I also much prefer when the cake is prepared with salted butter, especially crystal salt. To my opinion, the twist added by the salt make all the flavors stand out.
Of course, this tea did not promise to be “Tarte Tatin” flavored, but Pomme d’Amour and I believe the promise to be perfectly met.
If you have a very sweet-tooth, it should be a bullseye hit.
If you have more of a sweet and sour tooth, it might not be so convincing.

I’ll drink a second batch of this tea with great pleasure (and the first one did not linger long in my pot), however I know that I will not buy it, as I probably would not finish the batch, and that I have to be careful selecting candy-sweet flavored teas.

Preparation

this is funny because Pomme D"amour is a tea almost all people I swapped with requested (along with Pleine Lune of MF)
You’re the first to review it and I am happy you appreciate it for a sweet tea. If you don’t like too much pastries and cakes, maybe try some citrus teas, you’ll get the fruity notes without the sugar hint note. From DF Douchka is a very nice one but if you like teas not too strong on caffeine maybe Earl Grey French Blue from MF would please you.
Aïda as well from MF but stronger on the tea base

Was given this as an afterthought in a café in Lyon, where I’d purchase a set meal (the only thing available on a Saturday or Sunday) that included an additional pot of tea. I think because they were busy and I was the “demanding Amercian”, I was given this. It’s been a few days now (feels like a lifetime ago! it’s been four days) so I tried it.

Uh….

Well, it’s nice. Nice for someone else. (All I got was a faint apple thang, maybe something like a Shirley Temple. Is there grenadine in here?)

Flavors: Apple, Grenadine

Preparation

Sundays in France can be interesting. When I spent over a month in Montpellier your choices were two Restaurants, McDonalda or the Kebab places everything else was closed. I loved the time I spent in Lyon. I hope you enjoyed/are enjoying it.

Ooh, I remember seeing someone else’s review of this tea and thinking how delicious it sounded. Well, luckily for me, DF appears to have read my mind and included it in the calendar. According to miss Ysaurella, this is meant to be a toffee or caramel apple flavored tea (thanks dear, I wouldn’t have known by the name alone). There are a lot of flower petals and small pieces of apple mixed in among the black tea leaves. Dry scent is very caramel apple, yum!

The steeped tea smells lovely as well, though I do catch a bit of that French powdery quality. The flavor is lovely and appley, though I think I would categorize it more as a cooked apple than a raw one. The caramel is a lovely accent, but it doesn’t overpower here. There’s a touch of floral that I wouldn’t associate with caramel apples, but sometimes the French just can’t help themselves. ;) Overall, it’s yummy, but perhaps more of a caramel apple pie than the apple itself.

Preparation

I am behind by one day. I didn’t have a chance to have this yesterday.

This is an apple tea. Nina’s Marie Antoinette is so good that I had high hopes for this one.

This year many of Dammann’s teas give me a black licorice taste and scent. I am pretty sure it is not me as I am not getting this with other teas. I don’t recall this last year.

This tea, to me has quite a scent of black licorice. It is supposed to contain black cherry so I wonder if that is what I am getting.

This tea has that black licorice/black cherry flavour. There is an artificial, but pleasant, sweet red apple flavour. It makes me think of candied apples. I think I am getting a bit of caramel. There is a very slight floral flavour. Initially the black tea base seems quite light but closer to midsip it becomes bold. There is a strange astringency in the aftersip. It is more a tingling sensation,

I wish this one was a bit more apple, but it wasn’t too bad.

Preparation

hummm this is really strange Lala.I imagine you have this in a bag version due to the calendar.
Pomme d’amour normally has a strong taste of caramel apple and really nothing more. I wish you could taste this tea in the loose leaf version.

It is the sachet version from the Christmas advent calendar. I am thinking there may have been some contamination during shipping or something because a lot of the teas this year tasted like that to me. Even the ones I have had before with no problems.